Review: LG Octane

There are two displays in the Octane. The exterior display measures 1.75 inches and is the best of the enV line thanks to the added real estate. It has decent resolution and is bright enough to be seen out in the sun. The interior display carries forward the 2.6-inch size seen on previous models, with 320 x 240 pixels. This display looked great years ago, but pales in comparison to the HD displays on other devices in the market. It would have been nice for LG to step it up to 320 x 480. It still managed to shine brightly, however, and text and icons look good on it, if not occasionally ragged.

Signal

The Octane's two signal indicators — one for EVDO and another for 1x — both showed about the same amount of signal strength no matter where I took the Octane. The Octane averaged three bars during my tests, and passed the NJ vault test (the local ShopRite) with flying colors. I didn't miss any calls, and never had a data connection time-out on me. In all, signal performance gets good marks.

Sound

Both the earpiece and stereo speakers produced good quality sound. You could adjust the earpiece volume to a setting loud enough to hear conversations in most environments and it remained free of distortion or breakup. Quality of phone calls was merely average. The speakerphone seems to have lost some oomph compared to previous versions of this phone. The speakerphone worked fine in a quiet room, but wouldn't perform well in busy office. The ringers and alert tones were not loud enough for my liking, even with the volume maxed out. The vibrate alert was good enough, though.

AD article continues below...

Battery

Battery life has been good so far. The phone arrived with full charge, and despite a day of extremely heavy use, it still had two-thirds of a charge left the next morning. At this pace, the phone will easily make it through two days, if not more, on a single charge.